


Good Intentions

by prepare4trouble



Series: Little By Little [19]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ezra needs a hug, Gen, Sabine needs a hug, Space-Braille, Trying to help, Visually Impaired Ezra Bridger, and gets one in a later chapter, but not really managing it, he doesn't get one because he runs off again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-02 19:23:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10225337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: Sabine tries to help.  Ezra's reaction is not what she expected.





	1. Chapter 1

Sabine lay on her front on her bunk, propped up on her elbows with the tactile alphabet ‘primer’ as the droid had called it, open in front of her. It had been a long time since she had sat down and studied like this. Although she still used her language skills on occasion, it had been a while since she had been required to learn a new one, and while this wasn’t a _language_ as such, there were marked similarities, at this stage at least. Learning a new alphabet was often the first step to understanding a new tongue.

In some ways, this was going to be easier than that. After all, the words she would be reading would be written in a language that she already spoke and understood well, it was basically a code, and a relatively simple one at that, just a case of learning which symbol corresponded to which letter. She had experience with codes. This code however, was unlike anything that she had ever attempted before, or, it would be once she started trying to read it with her fingers. In theory, it shouldn't be a problem for her; in practice, she had a feeling that things were going to be a little different.

She stretched, and adjusted her position to get more comfortable. Over the past couple of hours of study, she had absorbed the printed information that came in the front of the binder, and memorised the useless yet mildly interesting information about the history of the reading method. Now she understood now what the droid had meant when he had referred to differing levels of reading. The code had two versions, the first which spelled out every letter in the same way as the printed alphabets that she knew, and the second which abbreviated hundreds of words, some of them just to a single letter, others to a short combination. There were additional symbols for common words, those that indicated two letters commonly used together, and so much punctuation that it made her head spin.

After the background information, she had found the alphabet itself, a page very similar to the one that she had given to Ezra, printed black on white, the letter that the dot combination represented printed above it. Her analytical mind quickly began to pick out patterns in the layout of the dots that represented each letter, making it easier to remember which one was which. She made a mental note to mention that to Ezra when she got the chance, in case he hadn’t noticed.

The following pages were laid out not unlike puzzle pages, words and phrases written on the page in dot writing, ready to be translated. She had to check back more than once, but by the time she had competed the three pages of code, she had become reasonable confident with every letter of the tactile alphabet. By sight.

She fingered the next page in the binder without turning the puzzle page that covered it. She knew from the texture of it that it contained the true version of the alphabet. This was the tactile version of the tactile alphabet, the one that could be read by touch, as opposed to the ‘dot writing’ that she had been introduced to in the academy. She was both eager to try it, and, for some reason that she couldn't quite explain, a little nervous. 

She turned the page slowly. The sheet underneath appeared almost blank at first glance, though if she looked, it was easy enough to see the raised bumps. What was less easy was seeing them well enough to tell one from the other. She adjusted the position of the page, allowing the light to hit it from a slightly different angle. It helped, a little. But then, this wasn’t designed to be read in that way.

She extended the index finger of her right hand to the page and touched the first letter. It was a single dot. She allowed her finger to rest there for a moment before she began to slide it back and forth, trying to memorise the sensation of that letter against her fingertip. When she was done, she slid her finger carefully sideways to the next letter and repeated the process.

The alphabet expressed in this way was different to the printed version. Even more different than she had imagined. Not only that, but despite being reasonably familiar now with how each one looked, how it felt was something else entirely. Perhaps being able to first identify the letters by sight wouldn’t be the advantage that she had assumed it would be.

Slowly, she moved through the entire alphabet in that way, going back again and again trying to tell the difference between similar letters. It was impos… very difficult. Much more difficult than she had anticipated. Once she reached the end, she began instead to attack the page at random, jabbing at the page with her eyes closed, and trying to decide which letter she was touching.

That didn’t go as well as she might have hoped.

Nor did her first foray into the following page, which was laid out in a very similar way to the printed puzzle pages, it challenged her to understand words printed with no ink. She glanced over it quickly, trying to force herself not to read the letters by sight, then turned the page back, removed the alphabet key page from the binder and placed it next to the puzzles, then began to work her way through them slowly, determinedly.

She knew that she should have spent longer on the alphabet, and if she had had the patience, she would have. She would have gone over it a third time, and a fourth. She would have come back to it again tomorrow, she would have challenged herself to recognise each letter with 100% accuracy before she moved onto trying to actually read anything. Unfortunately, patience had never been something that came easily to her.

She tried not to glance down at the page, making herself read the letters with her finger and not giving in to the temptation to look, to see whether she was right. She checked those she was uncertain of in the same way, her index finger running back and forth across the alphabet page until she found the letter that matched the one she was stuck on. It was a frustratingly long-winded process, made worse by those times when she cheated. She didn’t mean to do it, but her eyes would drift unbidden to the page, and she would pick out the required letter and then feel as though the effort she had put into trying to work out that particular word had all been wasted.

Finally, frustrated with her own lack of self control, she reached to the other side of the bunk where she was lying, and flicked off the main light. The glow panel, that maintained a small amount of illumination in the room even when the lights were out, switched itself on automatically. It provided enough light for her to just about see her hand in front of her face, or the difference between the dark color of the bed and the light of the pages spread on it, but not much else. This was the illumination level she maintained at night; the cabins had no windows, and without it, no light at all would be able to enter the room.

She hesitated, finger on the page again, then, on a whim, reached out for a second time, and turned off the glow panel too. The room was plunged instantly into a darkness so complete that it was almost impossible to believe. She felt herself go very still on the bed, then carefully sat up and looked around, moving her head from left to right, eyes straining against the thick darkness that filled her vision. She shuddered, imagining — not wanting to, but imagining nonetheless — what it might be like to know that that darkness would never lift. What it might be like to switch the light back on and find that it made no difference, to leave the room, to walk off the ship and into the base itself, and again see that same blackness.

Was it like darkness, or was it more like… nothing at all? She had never asked, she _would_ never ask. She wouldn’t know how to even begin to ask a question like that, and she didn’t know whether she would be able to understand the answer anyway.

She reached out into the void for the light control again. Her fingers brushed the wall until they located it, but stopped as they found the button. She pulled her hand back decisively. No. For her, the light would still be there when she was finished, the artwork that adorned the walls of her cabin would become visible again, and if she opened her door and went outside, the world would be there for her to see. But right now, for the task at hand, she didn’t _need_ vision. That was, after all, the whole point of the tactile alphabet. If she was going to learn it, she was going to learn it right.

She hadn’t known it was possible to make it that dark in her quarters. Light didn’t even penetrate underneath the door. Well, there was no chance of her cheating now, anyway.

* * *

Aside from the actual learning of the letters, the incredible difficulty that she was having telling where one letter ended and the next began, and how very _slow_ she was to work out a single word, the most frustrating thing about about reading with her fingers was losing her place on the page.

That was something that she probably wouldn't have thought of if she hadn’t switched the light off. It would have been easy to place her finger back on the right word after checking a letter if she had been looking what she was doing, but in the impenetrable darkness of her cabin, the instant she moved her finger from the page, she was lost. It had taken several frustrating searches, and several successful efforts to resist the urge to switch the light back on, before she had remembered to mark her place with her other hand before she moved to the alphabet page. Even then she had somehow managed to lose her place anyway.

Moving from the end of one line to the beginning of the next caused her almost as much trouble, and she hadn’t yet come up with a way to reliably do that without marking the beginning of the next line with her other hand, which meant leaving her hand there for what felt like hours, as she worked her way along the line. And then of course when she discovered a letter that she couldn’t work out, she had to move her place marker to the word she was currently attempting to read, losing the beginning of the next line. More often than not, she had to trace her finger backward along the line and then drop down one level to find the next word.

She supposed that these were things that would become less of a problem as her speed and comprehension improved, but they were also things that could very easily put a person off completely. The only thing that had stopped her from throwing the binder at the wall, was that she was so utterly _determined_ to make this work. If she wasn’t willing to do it herself, how could she expect Ezra to do the same? Even if he didn’t switch off the light she didn’t _think_ Ezra would be able to see the raised dots on the page. Not if she had correctly understood the information Hera had given her.

Her stomach gave a pang of hunger at the exact moment that she finished another word, about half-way down the first page. She thought back, and realized that it had been hours, at least, since she had last eaten. She stretched, and with some satisfaction, closed the heavy binder with a bang that echoed around her room, and reached for the light control. She had grown comfortable with the darkness over the past hours, but she was eager for it to be over.

Her eyes, grown accustomed to the darkness, stung as they struggled to adjust to the onslaught of light that rushed back into her world. She slammed them closed, throwing an arm across her face to protect them, then released them slowly, opening her eyes in a squint until they grew adjusted to the brightness. Once she had recovered, she climbed down from the bed and went in search of some lunch, resolving to increase the light level more slowly next time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, it’s just a pair of eyes, right?” He plastered a grin on his face; it was fake, the smile didn’t reach his… his eyes. She looked at him, unsure what she was supposed to say to that. “I mean, I’m a Jedi, so it’s not like I need them,” he continued. The grin and the confidence faltered slightly. “Just look at Kanan, he’s fine.”

The ship appeared deserted as Sabine exited her room and made her way to the lounge. That made sense; it was late in the day, and most likely anybody wanting to eat would have done so a few hours ago, and people still had duties they needed to perform. It didn’t matter what was happening in their lives, they still had jobs to do.

Now she thought about it, there was probably something else that she should have been doing too.

The tip of her finger felt strange; it tingled, almost buzzed with the sensation of a thousand tiny bumps passing underneath it. Her arm still itched slightly where the droid had taken the blood, and she was exhausted, physically and emotionally wiped out. If it hadn’t been for her stomach’s insistence, she might have stayed where she was in the dark of her room and fallen asleep.

The door to the lounge opened, and she found herself faced with Ezra, standing frozen in the center of the room, gripping a ration bar in one hand. He looked at her as though he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Sabine froze too, surprised. “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

He hesitated for a moment, then tucked the bar in his pocket and forced his face into something that looked like a close approximation of a smile.

She stepped a little further into the room, allowing the door to close behind her. “How’s it going?” she asked. It was an ask-on-instinct question, just something to fill the silence. She didn’t think until the words were already out of her mouth that she had a good idea already of how it was going, and the answer was probably not so great. She resisted the urge to slap herself in the face — that probably wouldn't _look_ so great either — and waited, half hoping he would, and half hoping that he wouldn't answer.

“Um…” Ezra ran his fingers through his short hair awkwardly; clearly he had realized her error too. “Great,” he said, unconvincingly. “Good. Fine… not bad. You know.”

Despite herself, Sabine couldn’t help but smile at that. “Sorry,” she said, and raised a hand to her mouth to cover the evidence. “That was a lot of answers.”

“You know me,” he said. The obviously fake smile softened into something that looked almost natural. “I like to be thorough.”

Sabine walked past him, heading to the kitchen area. Ezra turned to watch her as she did. There was something wary in his expression, but something hopeful too.

“What about you?” he asked.

Something about the whole exchange felt awkward somehow; stilted, but she couldn't tell whether that was real or happening inside her own head.

She reached up into the cabinet above her head, and grabbed first thing that qualified as food. She picked up two cups and filled them with the first drink she could find — which happened to be water, but that was fine — and placed them on the table. She sat down, and pushed one in Ezra’s direction. “Same,” she said, in answer to his question.

He relaxed incrementally, and took a step closer, reaching across for the cup. He took a sip, hovered awkwardly next to the table, not sitting down, like he was keeping his options open in case he decided to leave suddenly. She knew that feeling, she had experienced it more than a few times; that wariness, knowing that the other person doesn't mean you any harm, but being half convinced that they were going to cause it anyway. She ripped open the wrapper of her nutrient bar and bit into it. She realized as she did that she had chosen one of the bland, flavorless bars with the unpleasant texture. She forced herself to chew and swallow, and made a mental note to look at what she was choosing next time.

Or, maybe she shouldn’t. Ezra wouldn’t be able to do that soon enough, Kanan already couldn’t. Although she doubted that an inability to read the labels on rations was the worst part of losing your sight, it was just one small example of how unfair this whole thing was. And now she couldn’t stop wondering whether it was something that Ezra had considered.

“You’re eating late,” Ezra said. “Forget again? Busy working on some project?”

Well, yes, but… “Something like that,” she said quickly. He had meant art, but he hadn’t actually said so, which meant she could withhold some of the truth without lying. She wanted to ask him whether he had made any progress with the dot writing information she had given him, maybe try to gauge whether he was ready to move on to trying out reading by touch. She didn’t mention it, for now. It didn’t feel like the right time. Instead, she took another bite of the flavorless bar and washed it down with a swig of water. “You too,” she said. “Eating late, I mean. I didn’t expect to run into anybody.”

He shrugged and subconsciously touched the pocket where he had stashed his own lunch, or snack, or whatever he had intended the meal to be. “Been busy,” he said. “With Kanan. Training…” he stopped abruptly, looked away. “Stuff,” he added, unnecessarily.

Training with Kanan wasn’t anything unusual; far from it. It occurred to her that something in the training this time _had_ been. The way that Kanan used the Force to get around, to fight, to do… a lot, now she thought about it. Ezra would need to know all of that, and more besides; things that maybe didn’t even require the Force to do. The average blind person didn’t have that advantage after all, and while they might not all be running around the galaxy fighting a rebellion, they still managed to live their lives. 

Her mind took her back unexpectedly to the darkness that had filled her room as she had studied, that same darkness that Kanan now inhabited, that Ezra was facing. The idea of training must have suddenly taken on a new level of meaning for him now. Or perhaps it wasn’t that, perhaps his reluctance to talk about it came from the presence of Kanan himself, some kind of mental connection that Ezra was making between Kanan’s situation and his own. Or maybe it was nothing to do with that either, but he was assuming that she might think it was, and reacted accordingly.

Not knowing what was going through his mind was making this incredibly difficult. She could normally read him easily — or she had thought she could, the huge secret that he had been carrying had managed to slip under her radar somehow — but he was closed off now, holding back from her in a way that she had never imagined possible. Gone was the easy grin, the teasing tone, the jokes that they had shared the last time they had been alone together in this room.

Silently, Ezra took another sip from his cup, put it down and pulled out his ration bar. She noted with envy that it was one of the good ones, the ones with an actual flavor, and a flavor that didn’t want to make her puke. He ripped it open and slid into the seat opposite, to join her for lunch.

“So…” he said. He raised the bar to his lips and allowed it to drop away again, “I guess this wasn’t the welcome home that you and Zeb were expecting was it?” He smiled nervously, fingers fidgeting with the wrapper that surrounded his food. “Sorry about that.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He had nothing to apologize for; he had done nothing wrong, everything that was happening was happening _to_ him, not because of him, and anything that she, or Zeb, or anybody else might be experiencing was nothing compared to what Ezra must be going through. On the other hand, he knew all that. Or rather, she assumed he knew all that. He didn’t appear to be fishing for sympathy, but rather aiming for a conversation somewhere in the general vicinity of normal, and probably trying to confront the bantha in the room as he did.

It was a valiant effort, and probably better than she would have achieved if she had tried it. She decided to go with it; to sidestep the thing now would probably make it worse. “Yeah, you better be sorry,” she told him. She affected an exaggerated scowl, but carefully allowed a hint of a smile to creep into her expression at the same time, to let him know that she was joking. Could he see that? Surely he could, he wouldn’t have been able to keep it from them if it was _that_ bad.

She really needed to read that file Hera had given her again, try to concentrate this time, really understand it, then she would know these things for sure.

Maybe she should ask Noisy to print it out in the tactile alphabet, at least then she could be learning that at the same time. And maybe not having to look at the words would make it easier. Of course, at her current reading speed, she wouldn’t finish it for years, and by then she wouldn’t need the information anymore. By then, Ezra would already…

She forced herself to retain the joking, scowling expression, and ignored the sudden urge to cry. “Zeb and I had this whole ‘tales of the recon mission’ story worked out, you kind of stole our thunder,” she added.

Ezra stared at her, and for a moment she thought that he had misunderstood, that he genuinely believed she was upset with him, then the apparent shock melted into relief and he grinned. Sabine felt herself relax for the first time since Hera had met them off the Phantom and told them about that meeting.

“Oh yeah?” Ezra asked. “So, did that story include the part where you both came back reeking of sulfur?” He leaned back in his seat with an easy smile. “Don’t think I didn’t catch a whiff of it around the ship yesterday.”

“Must have been yourself, Bridger, because your intel was faulty, that place actually smelled pretty pleasant.”

Ezra folded his arms and glared at her, and her stomach gave an unexpected lurch. How long would he be able to do that for? How long before the jokes and the actions that accompanied them would have to change?

He must have seen, or perhaps sensed the change of mood come over her, because he backed off and directed his gaze back at the table. He raised his cup to his lips and took a sip, she got the impression that he was doing it more to give him something to do than because he was thirsty. “Seriously though,” he said. “I’m sorry. I should have told you all months ago. I had a plan to do it and everything, but then I couldn’t because…” he shook his head. “Hey, do you know about the dokma races?”

The sudden change of subject made her head spin. “Uh, yeah,” she said. “I’ve been a few times. You’ve seen me there. Not as often as you though, Mr. Compulsive Gambler.”

He nodded and took another sip of his drink before breaking off a piece of his nutrient bar and popping it into his mouth. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Forgot.”

They fell into silence. Not quite the same awkward one from earlier, but not exactly their usual comfortable familiarity either. They’d get back there, eventually. How, she wasn’t so sure. Had it only been a week ago that they had been here, in this very room, poking fun at each other, talking about the upcoming mission? That whole time, and for so long before, Ezra had been carrying that secret. She knew secrets, she understood them, and she had kept them herself, but nothing so big, and never for so long. And never, ever, from family. She rested her elbows on the table and looked across at him. “How’d you manage to hide this so long?” she mused.

The question was out there before she could stop it. She felt her eyes widen in panic as she tried, and failed, to think of a way to take it back, or to make it sound as though she was asking about something else. It was too late. She knew the answer anyway, not that Ezra was going to answer it: it was just life. To him, anyway. Given enough time, it was possible to get used to anything, you simply assimilated the new facts into your world view, and carried on, and the longer you did it for, the easier it became.

He paused, obviously taken aback by the unexpected question. She watched him, caught between the urge to apologize and tell him not to answer, and the equally strong desire to hear what he might say. The silence went on too long. “You don…” she began.

“I’m a pretty great actor,” Ezra told her, at almost exactly the same time. “So, I mean, there’s that.”

Sabine relaxed again. Crisis averted. Or maybe there had been no crisis in the first place. Maybe it was all in her head. Maybe Ezra was more okay than she had realized and she was projecting her own discomfort onto him.

She rested her elbows on the table and shook her head. “I’ve seen you pretending before,” she told him, incredulously. “‘Great’ is not the word I’d use.”

“Well, there’s ‘brilliant’, or I guess, ‘amazing’,” he said. She got the distinct impression that his relaxed demeanor was a front, but it was one that she wouldn't have noticed if she hadn’t known him as well as she did. Maybe he _was_ a decent actor after all. “I just didn’t want to sound _too_ big-headed. Anyway, fooled you, didn’t I? You never suspected a thing.”

He said that in a faux-mocking tone, as though gloating at his deceptive prowess. It felt easy and normal, though she was sure it had taken effort for him to achieve. She wanted to respond in kind, send some sort of veiled insult his way, keep the conversation going in the same tone, but she couldn’t muster the enthusiasm, the words wouldn’t come.

“No, I didn’t,” she said quietly. She popped the final piece of her ration bar into her mouth and tried to chew the thing. It was dry and difficult to swallow, in addition to being almost entirely devoid of flavor. She took a sip of water to wash it down. “You did good there.”

Ezra’s smile faltered as she failed to respond as he had presumably hoped. She sighed. Since she’d gone and broken the spell, she might as well go one further and address that rampaging bantha head on. “How are you though? Really?” This wasn't the same throwaway question she had asked when she had first seen him there, plucked from the air without thought to fill the silence. She genuinely wanted — and did not want — to know.

“Fine,” he said, repeating his response from earlier. He leaned back in his seat, shuffling slightly to the side as he did, opening up an escape route in case it should be needed.

Sabine frowned. “You’re not ‘fine’, Ezra,” she told him. “You can’t be. _I’m_ not ‘fine’, and I’m not the one this is happening to. Talk to me.”

“Hey, it’s just a pair of eyes, right?” He plastered a grin on his face; it was fake, the smile didn’t reach his… his eyes. She looked at him, unsure what she was supposed to say to that. “I mean, I’m a Jedi, so it’s not like I need them,” he continued. The grin and the confidence faltered slightly. “Just look at Kanan, he’s fine.”

She thought of Kanan; of how his nightmares had woken her in the middle of the night from the next room. She thought of those times when she had sat with him in the days and weeks after his injury, his listlessness, his disinterest in everything. She thought of the blankness of the mask he had taken to wearing to cover his injury and how, to her, it had been almost worse than the wound itself; how she had been forced to paint it because she couldn't stand to look at it anymore.

She thought of his almost complete absence for six months, how even when he had been there, he had been gone. She thought of him now; he still wasn’t quite the same man she had known. Something was missing, something other than the obvious. He didn’t smile so much anymore, even now, when he appeared in other ways to be ‘back’.

She wondered what Kanan would have made of Ezra’s statement.

Ezra stared at her intensely, as though he were trying to will her to believe him. She nodded; to do anything else would have been cruel. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess you’re right.” Her voice cracked just slightly as she spoke.

“Really,” he said, somehow picking up on her response. He ran his fingers through his hair again and didn’t look at her. “I’m fi…coping. I can still… It’s… it’s really not as bad as it seems, you know? I’ve got time, I can learn. I’m learning.”

She bit her bottom lip, teeth pressing into the flesh so hard that it hurt. She hadn’t expected a real answer. She had expected him to make an excuse and leave, as he had the previous day, when he had stammered his way through the basics of what he needed them to know, and then fled before anybody tried to get him to talk about it. She knew for a fact that he hadn’t slept in his bed the night before, and the only reason she could think of for that was an attempt to avoid Zeb. He had spent the past day, and she didn’t even know how many days before it, running from this, and she hadn’t expected that of all the people on the ship, _she_ would be the one he would speak to.

Now that he had, she didn’t really know what to do. She leaned forward, closing the distance between them slightly, though the table still served as a barrier separating them. She wasn’t sure whether that made things better or worse. “What are you learning?” she asked, in a voice so quiet that it was almost a whisper.

Still not looking at her, he sat still, and didn’t reply. Sabine waited, as the seconds stretched into minutes; finally he shook his head and slumped slightly. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing useful, anyway, Kanan doesn’t think I’m ready. And every time I try, on my own, to do anything more than sitting around meditating, it just doesn't _work_ , I think I can get an idea of what’s around me, and a second later it’s gone, and I’m not even sure if it was real of if I was imagining it, and anyway, even if it was real, if I can’t keep it up for more than a second, how am I going to be able…” he slumped further in his seat, looking suddenly so utterly lost, so…

So he definitely wasn’t ‘fine’. He wasn’t even close to it; she felt as though she was watching him crumble before her eyes, and she didn't want that. She had wanted him to talk, she had wanted the truth, but she realized now that she hadn’t wanted the truth to be _this_.

At a loss for anything else to do, she reached across the table. She couldn’t hug him, not without getting up, pulling him to his feet, the whole thing would be beyond awkward. Instead, she placed a hand on his arm, a small gesture that she hoped would be enough.

He flinched back as though he had been burned, so suddenly and unexpectedly that the surprise made her almost mirror the movement. She pulled her hand back quickly and cradled it in her other. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t…” What? She didn’t know what had happened, what had prompted that kind of a reaction from him. Clearly, he was tense and on edge, uneasy with the direction the conversation had gone, and probably feeling trapped, like it was too late to back out and flee now.

A thought occurred, a horrible thought. “You didn’t see me, did you? I surprised you.”

“What? No!” Ezra got to his feet, leaving his half-eaten nutrient bar forgotten on the table. His hands clenched and unclenched, and he shook his head angrily. “I mean yes… I mean...I _can_ see,” he said. “I’m not… I saw you just fine, I just don’t want you feeling like I need…” he broke off and shook his head. “I saw you just fine,” he said, and turned to leave.

“Ezra, wait.” She slipped out from her chair and took a few steps after him. She didn’t know what she was doing, why she was calling him back, or what she was going to do if he stopped. All she knew was that they couldn’t leave it like that.

He stopped, and turned back to face her. “It’s been a day, and I’m already sick of this,” he said. “I had this thing for months. Longer than that, even. Nothing’s changed just because you know now, I’m still _me_!”

She frowned, taken aback by that statement. “I know that.”

“Then just... don’t treat me like I can’t do things, I can still do _everything_ I could before, nothing has changed.” There was a pleading tone in his voice, like he was hoping desperately that she would believe it. “There was no reason for him to…” he tailed off.

Sabine waited, curious to know what someone had done, but when no continuation came, she decided not to probe for more. No point making it even worse, whatever ‘it’ was, because there was _something_ else going on here that she didn’t know about. “I won’t treat you any different,” she promised.

Ezra finally looked up and locked eyes with her. “Oh really? So, ’The Tactile Alphabet - Reading For the Visually Impaired’, that’s a file you like to hand out to everybody, I suppose?” He practically spat the words at her, then spun around quickly and left the room, leaving her staring after him, wide-eyed in shock as the door closed after him.

She stood alone in the center of the room, with no idea what to do next.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes, it was difficult to remember how things had been before, when his awareness through the Force had not been so heightened, when it had taken real concentration to gain an understanding of something that was happening outside of his earshot and line of sight. Now, things came easy to him, maybe even too easy. The lives of those around him became some kind of background noise, the Force transmitting little details to him even when he didn’t actively seek it out. It was like noticing something out of the corner of his eye, easy to see and difficult to ignore.

He didn’t tend to share the extent of his perception, he was aware of how intrusive that might feel to others. 

Something was happening in the lounge. Whatever it was — and he was deliberately working to block it out — emotions were high. Sabine and Ezra were there, talking, possibly — probably — for the first time since Ezra’s announcement. Good. It needed to happen sooner or later, and whether it had been planned by one or both of them, or whether it had been a random encounter, it was an important first step for Ezra.

Kanan was a little hungry, but he wasn’t going to interrupt that, so he resolved to walk past the door without interfering. Ezra didn’t need his protection, and certainly not from Sabine, or Zeb, or anybody else he might encounter on the base. It was an unfortunate fact that, for a while at least, Ezra’s news would be at the forefront of their minds, and it was going to color every conversation he had; it was something he would need to get used to, or learn to deal with in such a way that he could shut down difficult topics before they happened, communicate that he didn’t want to talk about it. Either was fine, but neither required Kanan as backup.

Kanan hadn’t had a backup, after all. Well, yes, Hera had been there, but there had been times that he had resented her efforts to help. Possibly even more than the times he had appreciated it.

He increased the effort he was putting into blocking out what was happening in the room. None of his business.

Unfortunately, it became his business when the door opened as he passed, and Ezra chose that exact moment to barrel out into the corridor. He would have hit him, if not for Kanan’s quick reaction. He stuck out both hands to grab the fast-approaching Ezra by the shoulders a split second before the moment of impact. “Hey, whoa,” he said. Shock and surprise hit him through the Force, before Ezra turned, and fled in the opposite direction without saying a word.

Great. So much for handling things on his own.

Kanan did a quick scan for Ezra. He had already left the ship and was heading off out to who-knows-where, probably to sit and sulk. Kanan sighed. He should go after him, he supposed. Or, should he? Whatever had happened, again, it was something that Ezra needed to deal with himself. Not to mention, the kid probably needed time alone, time to think, to internalize what was happening, to work through things in his own way as they happened. If he was constantly surrounded by people, it was liable to have the opposite of the intended effect.

He himself had spent a lot of time alone in the weeks and months following his injury. Too much. He wouldn’t allow Ezra to fall into that trap, but nor would he chase after him and try to help with every scraped knee and bruised ego. It wouldn’t help.

He sighed. Now that he was no longer blocking, Kanan was acutely aware of Sabine on the other side of the now-closed door. She was standing very still, close to the center of the room. There were emotions there, detectable but unreadable; shock was the overriding sensation that he could pick up, shock, and confusion. He hesitated, half tempted to apply the same reasoning to Sabine as he had to Ezra, but it wasn’t the same. Not at all. And Sabine hadn’t left, she was right there, just meters from where he was standing, and in pain. He opened the door and stepped inside.

He surprised her as he entered. Proof, he supposed, of the effect her discussion with Ezra had had on her. He stood, waiting for her to recover before moving forward into the room. “What happened?” he asked.

She seemed to recover then, somewhat. Or, at least began to move again. “Nothing,” she told him. Her voice trembled just slightly; it was something he might not have noticed if he hadn’t known her so well. Something he might not even have noticed a few months back, when he could see, before he had been forced to pay more attention to his other senses.

He took several steps closer, putting him in easy conversation distance from her, rather than calling across the expanse of the room.

“It wasn’t nothing,” he said. “Ezra was so eager to get away that he nearly ran into me on the way out of the room.”

He _felt_ her wince. That had never happened before; he had never been so focused on a person while they experienced that particular feeling to something he had said. It was disconcerting, like being caught in some kind of a feedback loop. He hadn’t meant it like that. He hadn’t meant to imply that Ezra hadn’t seen him.

Although, clearly he hadn’t.

“Because he was upset,” he clarified. “Focused on getting away. _Anybody_ can make mistakes when they’re in that frame of mind.”

Sabine took a deep breath; it shook, just the same as her voice earlier. Kanan reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, it’s…” He stopped as she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing tightly. He could feel the slight tremble through her entire body as he hugged her back, holding her, supporting her until the hitching in her breath subsided. She wasn’t crying, not quite, but it was close.

Finally, when she was done, she stepped back, swiped at her eyes with her fingers — maybe she had been crying just a little bit? — and took a deep breath. “Sorry,” she told him.

Kanan shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “ _You’re_ okay.”

She sighed deeply and wrapped her arms around herself. “Ezra’s not,” she said quietly.

“Ezra will be fine too,” he assured her. And he would. He just needed time, time to get over whatever had happened here, and experience, to help him learn how to deal with similar situations in the future. “I promise,” he added. “But I’ll check on him later to make sure. Do you want to tell me what happened?” Because Ezra wouldn’t, he was certain of that already.

Sabine sank into one of the seats by the table, picked up a cup and took a sip. “I don’t really know,” she admitted. “But I think it was my fault. I thought it’d help, but I guess not.”

Ah. People trying to help.

Still, he doubted it was anybody’s fault really. He sat down in the seat opposite her. On the table before him he found a half-eaten ration bar, and a cup of water, almost full from the weight of it. He pushed them aside. “Ezra’s still hurting over this,” he said. “We all are, but for him it’s…” he sighed. “He doesn’t really need a lot of help right now, but if there’s something you see him having trouble with, just make sure you ask first, okay?”

He was going to have to talk to Ezra about that too, at some point.

“No, I…” She hesitated. “It wasn’t like that. Or maybe it was. Yesterday, I showed him the tactile alphabet. The printed version, so he could study it… before, you know? I just thought he might… I don’t even know what I was thinking, he’s right, it was a stupid idea.”

Kanan searched back in his memory, but came up blank. “The what?”

“The tactile alphabet, we studied it briefly at the academy as a code, but it’s a way of reading by touch, for b… for people who…”

It was like stepping back in time, to a time when Sabine, and all the others too, had been nervous around him, watching their words, hovering anxiously, afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. It was excruciating. And Ezra had that all to come. “Okay,” he said, cutting her off before it got any worse. He nodded. “I think I get the picture.”

“I really did think it’d help, or at the very least that he just wouldn't be interested and he’d ignore it.” She was relaxing now, slightly, the shock and anxiety that had gripped her when he had found her there was dissipating, and she was beginning to sound more like herself. She sighed deeply. “I guess it was a pretty stupid idea, wasn’t it?”

Kanan took a deep breath and thought about it. Reading was one of those things he had been forced to accept were lost to him, but it had been one of the easier things to accept. There were work-arounds, ways to program computers to speak if necessary, and whatever this alphabet was, he didn’t think it would be possible to read a screen in that manner, anyway. For what you could use it for, he couldn't imagine it being worth the time and effort that he would have to put into learning it. Still, the idea was intriguing, that such a thing existed was interesting. “I think maybe it was the wrong time,” he said. “If you’d waited a couple of months, maybe longer, I don’t know.”

Sabine slumped a little, utterly dejected; her great idea, the thing that for whatever reason she had thought would make everything better, had been rejected by Ezra, and now by Kanan too.

“But,” Kanan added. He really didn't want to do this, but there was enough bad feeling around the ship as it was, and who knew, maybe he was judging it too soon, he didn’t even really know what the thing was, maybe there were practical applications, maybe it _would_ be something that could help Ezra. “Why don’t you show _me_ what you’ve got?”

“You?”

He shrugged. “You said it’s for blind people, you’ve got a blind person right here.”

Still, she hesitated. “I don’t know. I’m kinda reconsidering the whole thing.” He could hear a nervous smile in her voice and she drummed her fingertips on the tabletop hard enough that he could feel the vibrations through his own hand that rested there. “If Ezra hated it that much, I mean.”

“Honestly, I doubt Ezra ‘hated’ it. Most likely he didn’t give it a chance, and just dismissed it out of hand. He’s not in the right frame of mind, everything’s still very raw for him. For me, it’s been a while. I think I can handle it.” He smiled to show her he meant what he said, but he got the distinct impression that she wasn’t looking at him. He fingers continued to drum out a rhythm on the surface of the table.

“You weren’t interested either,” she said, mumbling and speaking so quickly that it was difficult to make out the words.

Kanan frowned.

“I showed it to you, back when… after you came home, and you couldn’t… see.” She took a deep breath, like getting those words out had taken real effort.

He thought that Sabine had probably taken it the hardest, his blinding. Once, he might have said that it was Ezra, but he had chalked that up at the time to misplaced feelings of guilt, and later to his own condition and fears for his future. Seeing Kanan learn how to compensate appeared to have helped him. With Sabine, it was different. Art was how she chose to express herself, and she seemed to view his inability to experience that now as a divide between them. The same divide she would probably see between herself and Ezra.

It was going to hurt both of them, and he didn’t want to have to witness that happening.

“It wasn’t as good as the stuff I’ve got now,” Sabine said. “I made it myself, pressing holes in a piece of flimsi from the back, and it probably would have been impossible to read anyway, but you didn’t seem to want to know. You never mentioned it again.”

Kanan frowned, trying to remember, but coming up with nothing. Nothing at all. And then, finally, a vague memory, so intangible that it could almost have been created on the spur of the moment. Sabine’s voice, nearby, nervous and uncertain in a way that he had never heard before, coming at him through a darkness that was still new and frightening. Placing things in his hands, saying… things. He tried to listen, but didn’t really want to. An all-encompassing sense of grief and loss overwhelmed him, and this, whatever it was, wasn’t going to fix his eyes.

“I didn’t want to know much back then,” he said. He hadn’t wanted to know, or to do anything. For a time his world had shrunk to the space between the walls in his quarters, or sometimes just to the area around his bed. Other times, there had been no world outside of his own mind. He certainly hadn’t been interested in learning how to read, like some illiterate youngling just starting out his schooling.

Even now, the thought rankled. It made no sense, and he had the presence of mind now to realize that, but it still seemed pointless, useless, a waste of time. Ezra’s reluctance was coming from a different place entirely, one born of a fear of giving in; making accommodations was akin to acceptance, but Kanan could still understand it well enough. He had been to that place too, once.

He didn’t want to do it, but if it would help Sabine, and, in the longer term, possibly Ezra too, he was willing to try. “Who knows,” he said. “maybe now I’m ready.”

“Yeah?” Sabine said, and she sounded so hopeful that he couldn’t have backed out now even if he had wanted to.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

A shuffling sound as she edged to the end of the bench where she was sitting, and then feet on the ground. “Wait there,” Sabine told him. She hesitated. “I mean, unless you have something you need to do. But if you don’t, I can bring you the stuff now. If you want me to, that is?”

He couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. “I want you to,” he told her.

“Okay.” She took two steps toward the door, then stopped. “I’m just going to bring you the alphabet sheet for now,” she said. “It’s got all the letters in alphabetical order, so you should be able to work out what each one is from the order. I think. But I can tell you if… wait there.”

The door opened, and then closed behind her as her footsteps disappeared into the corridor outside.

He wondered what exactly he had let himself in for with this. It didn’t sound like it was going to be easy. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing though; if nothing else, it might do him good to remember what it was like to have to learn something from scratch.

**Author's Note:**

> ♥♡♥ Comments are loved ♥♡♥


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